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Barton: Carter’s critics should put up or shut up

Loudmouth lefties who shouted their lungs out last Tuesday in an effort to disrupt Congressman Buddy Carter’s town hall meeting at the Armstrong Center were wasting their breath.

The Republican congressman from Georgia’s 1st District is on solid ground politically.

The second-term lawmaker was unopposed in 2016 in his first bid for re-election since first winning this seat in 2014, when he easily toppled Savannah Democrat Brian Reese, capturing 95,337 votes, or 60 percent of the total.

Indeed, Carter, a former Pooler mayor and former long-time member of the Georgia Legislature, hasn’t been seriously challenged since the 2014 GOP primary for the 1st District seat, when he narrowly bested Savannah surgeon Dr. Bob Johnson in a bitter, six-person primary fight.

If Carter has any political threat, it’s not from loony Democrats on the left. It’s from the Republican right-wing nut side that fears Carter isn’t conservative enough, a perception that is pure bunk.

But if the Democratic protesters who lustily chanted “Vote him out,” as shown in the news video posted on savannahnow.com last Tuesday are serious, then they have their work cut out for them.

Voters in Savannah and Chatham County, the largest population core of the 1st District, are notoriously tough to pigeonhole. While most voters in the city of Savannah preferred Democrat Hillary Clinton to Republican Donald Trump in last year’s presidential race, a pattern repeated nationwide in other urban, heavily minority areas, Savannah voters also chose a white Republican to be their mayor. They maturely proved that they don’t automatically vote along race or party lines.

Besides, the Democratic Party appears to be in shambles statewide. That’s to be expected. The Democrats had gotten fat and happy from ruling the political roost across Georgia since the days of Reconstruction in 1871. They haven’t recovered from the beat downs that Republicans gave them in more recent years. America has been changing, too, moving away from the policies and the politics of Democratic leaders like Franklin D. Roosevelt who were once revered by working class people across the South. Some smart Democrats, like former Georgia Gov. Zell Miller, sensed this movement immediately and wrote a book about it, “A National Party No More.”

Nowhere has the Democratic Party’s fall from grace been harder than in Georgia’s 1st District. The 1st District was once as Democratic as a Thomas Jefferson tea party. Not that long ago, 1st District voters sent Democratic Congressman Elliott Hagan of Sylvania to Congress for 12 years, followed by another Democrat, Millen’s Bo Ginn for 10 years, followed by one of the best Democrats to hold this seat, Screven’s Lindsay Thomas for another 10 years — 32 years of Democratic dominance. Today, it’s all gone with the wind.

After the hard-working and patriotic farmers and small town people across the 1st District from Statesboro, to Waycross, to Alma to Homersville, correctly sensed that the Democratic Party had abandoned them, they craved someone who wouldn’t abandon them or look down their noses at them. Into that void stepped Savannah Republican Jack Kingston, a former state lawmaker who would serve for 14 years as 1st District congressman. Part of Kingston’s genius was that he eschewed political labels. He refused to put the word “Republican” on his campaign signs as he wanted Democratic votes, too. His secret weapon was his district staff, largely inherited from Thomas. It was second-to-none in terms of constituent service. Voters may not remember how Kingston voted on a given bill but they do remember how his staffer, Trish DePriest, helped them cut red tape so they could get a passport at the last minute or their Social Security check.

Buddy Carter is building on Kingston’s successful legacy. While it wasn’t smart to schedule his town hall in a venue that was too small by half and at a time when many working people couldn’t attend, he still deserves credit for taking the shots that seemed mostly intended for America’s president, Donald Trump. Carter knew what he was walking in to. He also knows that when Democrats are frothing at the mouth, it indirectly helps him as it does Trump. His political base — the base that Democrats seem to have bizarrely abandoned — doesn’t identify with the rude and ill-mannered.

America is best served by having a strong, multiple-party political system that gives voters real choice on Election Day, including voters in Georgia’s 1st District.

They should wise up. First, they can’t beat somebody with a nobody. A Democrat is going to have to step up and run against Carter, which will be a tough uphill race. Unless Carter really messes up, which seems unlikely, or Trump is a disaster, which seems more likely, Carter isn’t going anywhere, except to pick up his luggage in the arrivals area at Reagan-National Airport. He’s almost a lock for a third term. When he last ran for re-election, the only notable opposition was a feeble write-in campaign waged by St. Simon’s Island resident Nathan Russo.

The Democratic Party was AWOL in 2016, which decades ago would have been unthinkable. Will things be different in 2018? Probably, given Savannah-Chatham’s Democratic leaning, and the district’s Democratic history.

Political protests are useful, as they keep elected officials on their toes. But yelling and shouting just to yell and shout is pointless, annoying and unmannerly. At some juncture, Carter’s critics must either put up, by coalescing behind a challenger, or shut up.